September 13, 2018

Weekly Standard Fact-Checks ThinkProgress Article

The Weekly Standard conducted a fact check on the article which argued that the headline is inaccurate, though it offered to change the rating if the headline is fixed. “While ThinkProgress engages in an argument to suggest how Kavanaugh might vote in a Roe v. Wade redo, the article does not provide evidence that ‘Kavanaugh said he would kill Roe v. Wade’... TWS Fact Check could not find an instance where Kavanaugh ‘stated he’d overturn #Roe.’” (The Weekly Standard, Twitter)

“The Weekly Standard may disagree with its headline, but it is simply wrong to call it ‘a verifiable lie’ when it rests on a nuanced and subjective legal argument... Millhiser’s headline is exaggerated, but captures the essence of Kavanaugh’s words—or at least, the author’s own informed interpretation of them. It’s a far cry from fake news."

“If an article is basically factually correct, but has a headline that is basically factually wrong, fact-checkers ought to take action — or what else are they for? Some people think the ‘false label’ ought to be reserved only for moonbat headlines about the Pope being a lizard person, but it’s hard for me to see how that meaningfully improves our news ecosystem.”

"The headline on the ThinkProgress article was false. Kavanaugh didn’t say he would kill Roe. And the Standard was right to point this out.”

Slate

“The real lesson here... is that Facebook has no idea how to handle the fact that a massive percentage of political discourse takes place on its platform, and the solutions it’s testing are creating new and dangerous problems. The debate over Kavanaugh illustrates that our public discourse is in the hands of people who have no idea how to manage it responsibly.”

Dated but relevant: Many argue that Politifact is harder on statements from conservatives. In one example, it rated identical statements as “mostly true” when said by a Democrat (Jim Webb), but only “half true” when said by a Republican (Rand Paul). The rating was later changed to be consistent, but all of the analysis remained the same.

Furthermore, “during the 2012 election season, PolitiFact assigned Mitt Romney 19 ‘Pants on Fire’ ratings. For comparison, for every single Democrat combined from 2007-2016 the ‘Pants on Fire’ rating was only assigned 25 times. This seems to indicate Romney wasn’t just a liar, but an insane, raving liar, spewing malicious deceit at every possible opportunity.”

“ThinkProgress is a project of the left-wing Center for American Progress, which was founded by John Podesta, who served as President Bill Clinton’s White House chief of staff and as Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign chairman. I can think of no better tribute to the legacy of CAP’s political patron saints than for ThinkProgress to go after a fair fact-check with an attack that includes an absurd parsing of the true definition of a word and allegations of a vast right-wing conspiracy."